1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and more specifically to an electrical unit containing a removable storage device such as a hard disk drive.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, an electro-photographic image forming apparatus is widely applied as a copier, a printer, a plotter, a facsimile, a multi-function printer having a plurality of such functions, and others. Then, an image forming apparatus specifically developed lately is what called a digital compound machine including an image transmission function of exchanging an image by communicating with another device or a terminal through a network, in addition to conventional image reading and printing functions. Such image forming apparatus uses a removable large volume storage device (referred to simply as a ‘storage device’ hereinafter) such as a hard disk drive (referred to simply as a ‘HDD’ hereinafter) in order to store and access to a large volume of image information. Then, because a large amount of image information is stored in the HDD, a user's need of periodically pulling the HDD out of the image forming apparatus and keeping the HDD is increasing lately from an aspect of secrecy of the stored image information.
The image forming apparatus includes a control board (image controller) mounting a CPU and others as a control unit. The control board is often mounted on a back of the image forming apparatus from such aspects that its size is large and that there is no direct access of the user. It is preferable to dispose the control board and the HDD closely from each other because the HDD is connected with the control board through a cable to transmit/receive image information. To that end, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-311760 has developed an image forming apparatus in which the HDD is disposed on a back of a body of the apparatus (referred to as an ‘apparatus body’ hereinafter), i.e., in a vicinity of the control board mounted on the back of the apparatus body, to connect with the control board.
However, because the HDD and the control board are mounted on the back of the apparatus body in the image forming apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-311760, it is difficult to reduce an installation space of the apparatus body. If the HDD and the control board are provided on an upper surface of the apparatus body for example in order to reduce the installation space of the apparatus body, there is such a problem that workability in a work space on the upper surface of the apparatus body drops due to such reasons that flatness of the work space is hampered and that level of the work space is heightened. It is desirable for a user, e.g., a user of a wheel chair, who has difficulty reaching the work space on the upper surface of the apparatus body to be able to improve the workability in the work space.